Not So Sweet

Directed by a focus group of 17-year-old boys (and their younger sisters, maybe) who titter at the mention of the word "punany" and guffaw at the sight of Selma Blair caught on a cock ring (surrounded, no less, by onlookers straight from a Village People audition), this is romantic comedy for audiences who find the films of the Farrellys too stodgy and the movies of the Weitzes too sentimental. Penned by Nancy Pimental, known only as Jimmy Kimmel's replacement on Win Ben Stein's Money, it drips with empty-headed cynicism (audiences are fucking stupid, check) and copious jizz jokes; a dry cleaner licks the crusty white stain on Blair's dress, in front of a priest and her elementary-school teacher--what fun! Other highlights include talk of vaginal freshness, anal leakage and the double-barreled sight gag that involves Christina Applegate taking a leak in a men's-room urinal while Cameron Diaz gets dicked in the eye. (Billy Wilder would be proud.) Neither clever nor subversive, the movie's merely tricked up and sicked up to cover what's essentially the oldest story ever told: Diaz, playing Christina Walters, is a Bay Area good-time girl who wants Mr. Right Now and freaks when she meets Mr. Right (61*'s Thomas Jane), who, unbeknownst to her, is on his way to walking down the aisle with Parker Posey (aw, wonder if it'll last). The cast's game for anything--Diaz and Applegate are never more radiant than when discussing the fresh smell of pussy, and Blair will be forever proud of feigning having a cock ring lodged behind her tonsils--but The Sweetest Thing is also the dumbest thing this side of a lobotomy. It will, of course, make a killing this weekend. Or maybe it's just one more Hollywood movie that will leave you feeling a little more dead inside.